Towards Automated Spectroscopy: Leveraging a Robotic Arm for Enhanced Spectroscopic Measurements

Developing systems that enable the rapid spectroscopic examination of objects with complex topologies over a large fraction of their surface area is a challenge with relevance for industrial control processes, as well as environmental exploration. For example, recent work by Hanson et al. developed a Stewart platform to enable measurement at the surface normal across an object after gross positioning with a robotic arm.In this contribution, we demonstrate how a 6DOF robot arm with an RGBD camera and spectrometer attached to the actuator can also identify the relevant topology of an object and make surface normal measurements at relevant points. We consider how these points can be identified and tracked to allow reproducible measurements despite variation in the positioning of the object.